


Delilah's Masterwork

by Papapaldi



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Delilah Wins Au, Dishonored: The Brigmore Witches, Dishonored: The Knife of Dunwall, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-27
Packaged: 2019-10-31 09:53:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17847179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Papapaldi/pseuds/Papapaldi
Summary: When Daud falls to Billie Lurk after the Overseers storm the flooded district, there is no one left to stop Delilah from finishing her masterwork and stepping into Emily Kaldwin's skin. Forced to flee, Corvo tries to uncover the ritual that has taken his daughter, along with a few remaining Whalers still loyal to Daud. Meanwhile, in the capital, Delilah rules her empire with Breanna and Billie by her side, uniting the Whalers and her coven into an unstoppable occult force. But, Delilah has her eyes set on a greater prize; to be worshiped throughout the isles, and to take the throne of the Outsider himself.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Handy reminder of the months in Dishonored for chronology's sake
> 
> 1- Earth  
> 2- Harvest  
> 3- Nets  
> 4- Rain  
> 5- Wind  
> 6- Darkness  
> 7- High Cold  
> 8- Ice  
> 9- Hearths  
> 10- Seeds  
> 11- Timber  
> 12- Clans  
> 13- Songs

 

_ When Pretty Emily woke one day, _

_ She saw the world a different way,  _

_ Her eyes now looked with a stranger's guile,  _

_ Her dainty mouth smiled a stranger's smile,  _

_ Her hands now worked the stranger's wrath,  _

_ Her feet now walked a stranger's path,  _

_ Emily fed, another grew stronger,  _

_ The stranger's cravings drove her onward,  _

_ And no one who looked on Emily's face,  _

_ Ever guessed who ruled in Emily's place.  _

__-__ Delilah Copperspoon, 1837

__..._ _

_“Corvo, are you there? It’s dark. It’s so dark, and I don’t know where I am.”_

** Month of Hearths, 1837 **

Corvo wrestled the key into the lock, the blood of Farley Havelock still wet and glistening on his blade. The old Admiral lay dead on the newly laid carpet of King-sparrow Lighthouse, his betrayed comrades Martin and Pendleton slumped over their poisoned glasses at the banquet table. The killing was over, though he feared that the worst was yet to come. The guards patrolling the fortress still wanted him dead, and his head carried a thirty-thousand coin bounty across the isles. Convincing the public of his innocence was going to be difficult, even with the evidence of journals and audio graphs that Havelock had so carelessly left behind. That was, if there was a public to convince at all. The plague didn’t care who was empress, no matter what Teague Martin preached at the Abbey. Noble blood couldn’t save them from the doom of Pandyssia.

The lock clicked, and he pushed on the gold-ornamented wood tentatively – bracing for some new threat to spring forth at him. Instead, he found Emily, just as Havelock had said, standing patiently in the centre of the room. Emily wasn’t patient.

“Royal Protector,” she said, voice cold and clear. He tried not to appear hurt, usually the girl would jump joyously at the sight of him, or at the very least call him by name. He cursed the loyalists once more, wondering what they had done to her to change her manner so. He took it in his stride, as he did so many things, and pulled off his mask – hopefully for the last time. 

“Emily,” he said, offering her a hand. She ignored him and continued past, brown eyes indifferent – moving up the stairs towards Havelock’s commanding office. She didn’t even comment on the body of the Admiral growing cold by the door. “Emily!” He tried again, as her footsteps echoed sharp and tinny on the metal stairs. No response. He was making to follow her when she switched on the Admiral’s microphone – a broadcasting station to the whole island. 

“City watch, this is your Empress, Emily Kaldwin.” She didn’t sound like herself. A regal, ancient tone resonated in her young voice. "Guards to the inner chambers immediately! Corvo Attano has broken through our defences.” At that he sprung up steps with the heightened speed and agility that drew from the void between the world. In less than a moment he was by her side, reluctantly pulling the mouthpiece from her hands. “The Admiral is dead,” her muffled voice still rang through. “Protect me!” That was the moment when his hand closed over hers, and he saw the truth plainly. “Protect your empress!” She cried, this time in a woman’s voice – deep, clear, and sharp as his sword. She turned to him in alarm, and there were her eyes – icy blue and uncaring. In his shock, he almost missed the first shot as it rang out through the lighthouse foyer – an elite guardsman firing a sturdy pistol up towards the landing.

He grasped the fabric of time and pulled it to a stop. The world was grey and swimming before him, that awful drumming and buzzing in his ears as if he were being dragged down deeper and deeper. Emily’s hand was frozen and ghostly white in his own, but something moved and shimmered around her. Concentrating, the being came into focus, and the smoke formed a face, jaunted and pale. It smiled.

“What have you done to Emily?” He demanded. 

Its grin only grew wider as it spoke, that same tone of voice that Emily now spoke with. “I’m afraid that precious Emily is gone, Lord Protector. Only I am here now.” 

“Who –“ the slowed, droning cry of one of the guards sounded as Corvo’s grip over reality faltered. He couldn’t hold it in place much longer. 

“I’d hurry if I were you, dear Corvo,” she teased, “time is running out.” He had no choice. Once again, he had no choice but to run. It seemed innocence was a lot farther off than he’d hoped. He let time slip through his fingers and the rogue bullet smashed one of the crystals hanging from the chandelier. The watch rushed in, brandishing blades and hot pistols, crying out in the name of the empress and the fallen lord reagent. He dashed towards the stairs, covering two flights in a second and a wash of bluish mist. The mark on his hand burned with power, craving blood. There was no way he was getting back down to the base of the structure without carving a bloody path to do so. An exploit like that was tempting – now that he finally had nothing left to lose. His hope of restoring Emily stayed his hand. He was no expert in the occult – he hadn’t even believed in such things until the Outsider had paid him a visit – but he knew that rituals, no matter how powerful they seemed, were the deeds of men on earth, and they could be undone. The guards clambered up the stairs behind him, as clumsy as he was swift. The stinging salty hair whipped at his unmasked face. It felt good as the cold tossed through his hair, billowed his cloak. He’d been so close to getting it all back – a life in a palace, with his daughter… now someone had taken it all from him yet again. That ghostly figure of a woman wrapped like a snake around his daughter’s throat. Those days spent in the flooded district winding his way back to the Hound Pits through streets and sewer tunnels. That long trip along the water to the island at the edge of Dunwall… they had left Emily unguarded, and now she was gone. He leapt his way to the highest point of the tower, where the wind was at its fiercest and metal beneath him its coldest. A tin bridge to nowhere, overlooking the vast murky ocean. The guards rounded the corner. The younger ones where terrified, but determined – their lower guard caps swept off on the wind. One of them stepped forwards, braving the creaking, soaked metal. Corvo simply sighed, not wishing to make a spectacle of himself yet knowing that this would make for a daring and popular tavern tale. He leapt off the edge of the lighthouse. 

He pulled himself down into a streamlined position, head locked between his arms in hope that his skull would remain relatively un-rattled, repeatedly dashing and re-materialising closer to the water to lessen the impact, as many times as his power would allow. He tried to imagine himself back on the Southern ridges of Serkonos, diving off the sandy cliffs and into clear tropical waters in the summers of his boyhood. It was a difficult image to conjure up, especially given the wailing winds and bitter cold sea-spray battering his body as he fell. 

_“I’m here,” he tried to say, but he couldn’t speak. It was as if he were drowning, his lungs heaving under the weight of crashing waves, screams muffled into inculminatous bubbles of air._

_The void was dark, as if its sunless sky were setting. The bright blue haze was fading to a richer, royal shade, and the grey cobbles stretching out before him crumbled under his weight. She was there – a slight figure on the horizon, clothed in creamy white lace and frills, calling his name._

_“Corvo?” She cried, that energetic, child-like tone restored. But only in his dreams. He reached out to her as the void fell away, the hazy blue deepening to dusky sea green._

His eyes began to sting and blur, and his chest burned as his lungs drew in water. The greying sun was a distant wave on the surface of the water, far away. Too far. Emily.

...

_“Corvo?” She asked, one final attempt. She knew he wasn’t here. Whales floated by in the blue mists – bloodied and moaning. Upturned stones were suspended in spiralling paths, and trees stood uprooted, reaching down towards the endless void. She’d heard tales of this place. This was a place for the dead and the unfaithful. She was terrified. A coil of dark smoke erupted, spitting fragments of black stone – knitting themselves into the shape of a man. He floated a few inches off the ground, arms crossed, looking down a pointed nose through pitch black eyes. She’d seen him before. A figure of her nightmares. He cocked his head to one side, surveying her without saying a word._

_“Who are you?” She demanded, “am I dreaming?” She added, suddenly uncertain. Surely a place like this couldn’t be real, despite the Abbey’s teachings._

_“In a way, your majesty, I suppose you are,” his voice was cold, layered as if echoing throughout a great chamber, muffled as if sounding from beneath the surface of a pond. It was eerie, the way his outline shifted and swayed like gas dancing in the air. “Except, this isn’t just any old dream, this, I think you know.” She nodded, and he continued, “this is a dream from which you will never wake, not if the new empress has her way.”_

_Emily furrowed her brow and put her hands on her hips, indignant at the thought. “But I am the empress, there’s no one else!”_

_“No, there isn’t," he agreed. “It’s a tricky matter that you will soon understand.” She wished he’d speak plainly. He reminded her of one of her mother’s advisors – so many pretty words that said nothing at all. The late empress had warned her of such people. “As for who I am,” he said, looking past her with those terrible eyes, “I think you know, Lady Emily.”_

_Of course she did, those pompous overseers always talked of him; an evil being that brought corruption and sin to all it touched. “Y-you’re the Outsider.” She tried to keep her voice from stumbling, an Empress should not fear anything. He didn’t confirm the fact, just smiled thinly. “Am I really going to be here forever?” She asked, afraid_

_“Forever is an impossibly long time, your majesty. Whether here in the void, or looking out of your own eyes, a prisoner. You will be here until someone can undo what has been done. I, however, will be gone much sooner, if the empress has her way.” Before she could ask what he meant, he was gone as he’d appeared; in a swirl of smoke and black stone._

_“Wait! –“ she cried out to the empty air. She didn’t want to be alone here. She couldn’t be alone again._


	2. Chapter 2

_There was no shock in his face as she drove her blade through his heart, no fear. In the split second between realisation and the knife piercing between his ribs, he showed nothing but acceptance, patience. He knew that this had been a long time coming, and he didn’t even raise a hand to fight against it. How ironic it was that the outsider had sent him on one final chase through the city after an elusive name, when the true mystery had stood beside him, guiding him all along, ready to be called to arms. Ready to stab him in the back. Daud’s body dropped at her feet a she pulled her blade free, red and glistening. His crumpled form made an unceremonious thud against the tin and jagged wood of their dilapidated base. The whalers watched it fall, and felt their connection to the void severed at the source. Delilah stood ever watchful on the ruined roof top, a dark, slender silhouette against the moon’s eye. No one could stop her now. Billie Lurk had made sure of that._

**Month of Clans, 1837**

“Captain?” Billie murmured a groggy affirmation as she rustled herself into a sitting position. The beds in Dunwall Tower were far too soft. She recalled that even the stiff canvas beds in the flooded district had been too soft after a childhood spent on the streets. She would become used to palace life in time. She dreaded that day. The place she had spied on the horizon; light fireworks flashing and lights sparkling long into the night – the place she had resented from her hovel on the abandoned rooftops – was now her home. 

One of the Brigmore girls stood by the foot of her bed. A young thing covered in dark vines and poison roses. “The empress requests your council in the throne room.” She barely suppressed a giggle. The fact that their long-awaited plan had worked never failed to excite the coven. The world, slowly but surely, was falling into their hands. Billie nodded, dismissing the girl with a wave. 

Billie had her own suite now – the royal protector’s old chambers. She wondered if he had felt the same when he’d slept between those silken sheets after his life on the streets of old Batista down south. She wondered if he missed it now – sleeping rough wherever he was in the isles. Hopefully, he was dead in a ditch, but given his reputation Billie doubted that to be true. She often dreamt of the so-named masked felon – though she had never met the man – he was the new empress’ number one concern, and hence Billie’s number one mark given her position as royal protector and captain of the watch. Life had moved very fast since Delilah had completed her ritual. Suddenly, the new little empress was being escorted from Kingsparrow Island to Dunwall proper by a horde of the city watch. The coronation was held as soon as possible – likely through the empress’ insistence – and the reigns of two lord reagents were at an end. The whalers and the witches were brought in guised as watchmen and servants being transported from neighbouring isles – eager to serve under the new monarch. Soon after the guards from Kingsparrow were put to rest, or used for cruel magics by Delilah’s coven. Billie didn’t ask what exactly they did with them – she didn’t want to know. For the present, appearances were being upheld, as nobles and politicians still came by ever so often to pledge their allegiance and discuss rebuilding efforts. Emily was always delighted to see them kneel before her, and her discussions were delicately spoken, well-articulated, far too civil for a restless child her age. 

She changed out of her night clothes (a commodity that felt unnecessary to her) and into her palace attire. It was a new uniform, fashioned by a particularly talented seamstress who had once sewn for nobles before joining Delilah. It was similar to an elite officer’s garb – a red jacket, trimmed to the neck and fastened down with smart gold buttons. The overcoat was navy and white, a long and cumbersome thing which she seldom wore. The lean, red outfit reminded her of her whaling days. Simpler times. She’d let her hair grow in the past months, and it now touched her shoulders. She kept it pulled back in a tight ponytail. The tower was as well-kept as ever – at least in the places that guests would see. Empress Emily stressed the importance of keeping up appearances while their power took hold, and her disciples, along with the remaining servants who wisely kept their suspicions of the new staff to themselves, were keeping the place well mannered. Most of the whalers had been swayed in their loyalty after Daud was killed. They were left powerless, their minds and body’s exhausted by the Overseer’s assault. Delilah promised new power, and Billie was already respected greatly as Daud’s unofficial second in command. Most were easily convinced. Some, however, rejected their new path, and fought bravely for it. Barely any of them survived, and were no doubt now scattered to the farthest corners of the isles where Delilah could not reach them. For now. 

Billie ascended to the roof of the tower, climbing flights of white marble stairs draped with deep blue carpets. The dark wooden walls and warm glow of ornate chandeliers overhead gave the place a sense of humble comfort, despite its grandeur. For now, the throne was situated in the reagent’s safe room, as it was still the most secure area of the complex. Emily planned to build a new throne room at the very top of the palace, after demolishing the ugly, greyish spire build out of the reagent’s intense paranoia. She dreamt of the aristocrats and subject climbing up the tower to reach her, as if ascending a staircase to the sky. For now, she made do with the makeshift chamber, spending her days sitting on that great wooden chair under the imperial banner of golden swan and crown. She was still soaking in the reality of the victorious situation. Delilah was empress of the isles, the role she had always felt she was born to fill in adoration. Billie passed two of her old whaling comrades, stood guard beside the entrance to the chamber if city watch uniforms. It was strange to see them unmasked, to hear their voices of greeting unmuffled through the respirator glass. They saluted her with a fist to the chest just as they once had for Daud. She wondered if they were satisfied with their new life serving the empress. 

Emily was, as Billie knew she’d be, sitting atop the Kaldwin throne with a wily grin plastered across her face. The expression looked twisted on young Emily’s mouth, and sharp, dark pantsuit seemed at odds with the once carefree and girlish style the young empress had employed. She’d had an outfit designed that was identical to Jessamine’s most famous get-up, and had cut her hair short and sleek to more closely resemble the style of her old body. Already, the girl seemed many years older than she had been when Billie had helped snatch her form her mother’s arms less than a year ago. Emily Kaldwin was no more. Delilah beckoned her closer. Billie nodded, obliging, and made her way up the stairs to where the Hiram Burrows had once paced, restless, watching for the touch of the masked felon’s blade in his back. Breanna Ashworth, now royal spymaster, stood at the right hand of the throne. She was dressed prim and proper as ever, and her expression was twisted up in a way that conveyed you were lucky to be afforded the privilege of even looking upon her. Needless to say the two of them didn’t get along. Breanna had been bitter of late, more bitter than usual, after the initial excitement of their new situation had worn off. Delilah had been her lover for some ten years, and now she was in the body of a child, and continuing such a union would be problematic to say the least. Of course, countless others in the coven were more than willing to take her place, they practically worshiped Breanna and Delilah both, but it was clear that Breanna remained less than pleased with the arrangement. It was a necessary sacrifice, for the world they would build with Delilah at the helm. 

The new empress would always tell her just how important she was; the bridging peace between the whalers and the witches, a tricky thing to maintain. She wondered what Delilah had planned for her now. 

“Royal protector,” she said, that cold, languishing tone. How strange it was to see a child speak in such a way, when the first time Billie had met her she’d cried for her mother and argued with fierce temperament. “the girls and I have been working on a little something for you, a surprise gift if you like.” Delilah wasn’t one to give gifts, not unless they came with a price anyhow. Billie was skeptical. The empress continued through Billie’s uncomfortable silence. “As you know, the wolfhound magic is a delicate craft, bringing dead things back to life, in whatever broken a form, becomes far more difficult as the subject grows more… advanced.” She was dancing around the subject, trying to sound impressive. It was a quality of hers that had been alluring at first, but Billie had quickly grown tired of it. “You recall that I kept the body of your old mentor for experimentation – one of this few in the known world marked by the outsider, the void itself running through his veins! It was an opportunity I could not pass up.” She knew where this was going. What had they done to him? “That power still exists within him, and with the help of all those _retired_ guardsmen, along with the works of a certain infamous torturer, we were able to create something entirely new.” She grinned, malignant, prideful. She nodded to her spymaster and she drew her arm in a hooked, grasping motion. Billie felt a chill run through her as a shambling, brutish figure appeared before her in a haze of blue mist. Daud. His skin was white, run though with bulging, purplish veins. There were places on the scalp where the skin had started to rot, preserved only by its connection to the void behind the world. His old scar drew in the skin around it, distorting his face and curling up one side of his mouth into a ghoulish smile. She could hear his old, crumbling bones creak and shift against slack muscles reanimate. The mark of the outsider burned blue and bright as ever on his hand, now bound to the will of the coven. How could Delilah possibly think she’d want this? Billie held nothing but respect for her old mentor, the man who had pulled her up form nothing and become like a father to her. This was no gift, this was a reminder. A reminder that she was Delilah’s now, a puppet of her new empire just as much as Daud was; unthinking, unfeeling. A dead man walking. 

“We finished him up just last night, isn’t he marvellous? The old knife, bent to my will.” The empress spoke with childish glee, they way young Emily might have spoken during play, in stolen moments of fun and cheer. “He will protect me now, in death, since I can no longer protect myself,” she scowled in frustration. The new empress was growing restless in the absence of her power. Of course, she was still connected to the void as long as her true body lay sleeping on the ritual pire, but her physically manifested power was lost to her, just as the back of her palm sat blank. “His mark still tethers him to the darkness, but his will is lost to the void. May his spirit never find rest.” Delilah watched him thoughtfully, the man who had ravaged a city to find her and almost succeeded in foiling her plans at their most crucial moment. “Not only does his power serve me, but the power of his disciples will be restored, in time.” The whalers would be glad, though Billie had been granted some of Delilah’s power in their uneasy alliance, Daud’s men grew anxious without the song of the void in their ears. With their full powers restored on all sides, they would be untouchable. Delilah cocked young Emily’s head to one side, smirking. “What say you, Lurk?” She savoured the sound of the name on her tongue.

“I say,” she chose her words carefully, “it’s about time someone brought the brute to heel. His power was great, but he lacked your vision, majesty. Now he will serve ours.” 

“See Breanna,” she drawled, grinning up at her advisor, “I told you she’d be pleased.” 

“And serve us he shall,” Breanna added, her voice ever pompous, always talking down to the common folk, just the way she’d been raised to. “Not only will he protect our dear empress, but he will hunt down the old crow, Corvo Attano. He is the only one that could oppose us now.” Billie nodded, it would be a weight off her conscience to see Attano defeated. Maybe Delilah would do the same to him that he had to Daud. She shuddered to think, the royal protector serving the empress once again – rotting and cold while a witch slithered in his daughter’s skin. 

“We have further business to attend to this morning,” Delilah said, grinning once again, “those old philosophers Sokolov and Joplin have been working diligently under our _persuasive_ techniques. The days of the rat plague will soon be at an end, and the people of Dunwall – of all the Isles – will look to me for divine answers.” The end of the plague? Billie doubted such a thing was possible, though perhaps through a mixture of the coven’s magic and the philosophers’ intellect, a cure could be developed. 

“Furthermore,” Breanna added, “a few of our sisters have infiltrated the ranks of the oracular order. With their knowledge I have begun working on a device that will allow me to shape the visions of the oracular sisters that they draw from the void. Delilah’s presence there will only make my influence stronger. Soon the Abbey of the Everyman will be fed a new kind of prophecy, as their ranks are slowly filled by our own brethren.” It was clear that the two of them so enjoyed relaying their ingenious schemes, although Billie grew tired of their idealistic musings, their power was very real, and she had yet to watch one of their plans fail before its fruition. 

“So, it seems that the two of your are busy then,” Billie surmised, trying not to look at the husk of Daud and his dead, glassy eyes. “How would you have me serve you, your ladyship.” 

Delilah smiled. Oh how hear heart drunk in admiration like a gambler took his whiskey – greedily and without satisfaction. “For you, Captain Lurk, I have another task in mind, though it’s completion lay on the far horizon.” Such flowery words, fit for an empress. “It is a task I would entrust only with my closest of allies, and, if I may, my closet of friends?” She offered. Billie smiled gratefully, through gritted teeth and sharp eyes. “For you, I offer a familiar task, one that might remind you of old times.” She gestured towards Daud, still standing motionless, awaiting orders. _Just like me,_ she thought. “A mark,” she grinned, “the most powerful and coveted in all the world. When the time comes, Lurk, I want to you kill the Outsider himself.” Billie tried not to betray her shock. She knew that Delilah had big plans, but this was astronomical even for one such as her. She remembered the times she spent crouched beneath his shrines, watching Daud, dazed and muttering, eyes growing dark as he stared into the void. She remembered wanting, desperately, for the elusive being to speak to her, to come to her in the night, to share his dark gifts and confide in her. She wondered what it would be like to bring such a creature down, if such a thing was even possible.

“Is such a thing possible, your majesty?”

To that, Delilah fashioned the girl’s lips into yet another cruel smile. “He was a man once, like any other, just as I am now a woman. Just like any man, he can bleed. I know the void almost as well as I know the world of flesh and steel, and, like this world, I will one day rule it.” She would never be satisfied, Billie realised, and why should she be? She, like so many, grew up hopeless in a world that loved them not. Power was something tangible to people like Delilah, something that could be seized and moulded and held. She would not rest until she had it all. 

The Empress told her where to begin – a rumour of a twin-bladed knife. This task, she stressed, was the final step of her masterwork, and there were many things to be done before then. Regardless, Billie would be the one to do it, to seize that final piece of the world and hand it to Delilah, kneeling. She wasn’t sure if she felt dread or excitement. All she knew was just how desperate the people of Dunwall were right now, desperate for any sliver of hope the world would throw them. Most were convinced that the plague was some terrible curse of black magic, and the Abbey had only helped spread the doctrine that it was the Outsider’s blight over the land. They would look to divine answers when a miracle cured the plague. If the Abbey could really be corrupted, then that miracle wouldn’t be the scriptures, and it certainly wouldn’t be the unholy science of natural philosophy. No, the power that answered their praise and lifted the curse of the Outsider would be tangible. It would be presented as an entity of light and virtue, a new god for a new age. It would have a name. Delilah. 


	3. Chapter 3

_Time was a strange thing in the void. It ebbed and flowed like waves over one’s consciousness, expanding and contracting and sometimes disappearing altogether. Staring out into the blue nothing, watching the whales hover by, she felt almost tranquil, a paralysing fear that had embedded itself into a deep, existential acceptance. She would never leave this place. Sometimes, something would challenge this notion, make her remember the life she once knew as a girl in a palace who liked to draw and play. All the while, she felt someone watching. It wasn’t the Outsider, who watched from without – someone watched Emily from within. It watched from the void and from the world – a poison entangled with her spirit. The false empress. Emily hated her, the cold clawing hands around her neck, the soft, stinging whispers within her own thoughts._ Little black sparrow, how does it feel to lose it all?

_It was Corvo that kept her sane. She would see his face reflected on the water that flowed upside-down from phosphorescent streams. She saw his silhouette, steadfast on the horizon, running to rescue her but never coming any closer. She saw his mask in the shape of the hazy clouds, the skull of a dead man weaved into the sky. It was the void’s way of telling her that he was still out there, searching. That he would always find her. It was the only thing that kept her tethered to the world where she was born. It was the only thing that stopped her from fading into nothing._

**Month of Clans, 1837**

When Emily awoke, she was in a bed softer than anything she had felt since her days in the palace, days which now seemed a lifetime ago. It took her a moment to work out where she was – the familiar smells and sounds of Dunwall Tower almost convinced her that the past year had been a dream, and that she was back in her old bedroom, that her mother was empress, that Corvo was here with her. It was only then, like grasping for the wisps of dream that fled in waking, that she remembered the void. She’d been there before in her nightmares, seen the Outsider’s face and walked through the eerie, still air. Living in it had been even stranger, and even now she was beginning to forget what it had felt like to walk between the world, it wasn’t a sensation for mortal things to hold onto for more than fleeting moments of the sublime. 

Instinctively, Emily reached up to part her hair from her eyes, only to find that it had been cropped short. She wasn’t wearing her usual nightclothes, they were new, tight around the wrists and waist with long flowing extremities. It was old room, from better days, even in the dark with only silhouettes to guide her she could tell as much. All her old things were gone; the dolls and books that use to litter the shelves, that her mother would insist that she clean rather than leaving it to the servants. The sheets themselves were different too, heavy and silken, strange on the skin. It was true then, someone else was playing empress in her place. Even now, her body didn’t feel likeher own. It felt colder, thinner, older. Perhaps she had gotten used to the void. She heard scuffling outside the door, and she fumbled with the handle. Locked. 

“Hello,” she called. Her voice felt tight and twisted in her throat. “Is there anyone there?” Whatever black magic had robbed her of her agency was surely over now, she was flesh again, the false Empress was gone.

Voices whispered behind the door, rapid and unsure. “What should we do?” One of them said, a woman. Her voice echoed and wavered like the Outsider’s, somebody touched by the void. 

“Hush Collie, Delilah said we shouldn’t talk to her,” the other hissed. The first let out a small yelp as her friend nudged her in the side, “sooner or later she’ll be quiet.” 

“Your games are over!” She cried, putting on that powerful, regal voice her mother always did when she was commanding her subjects. “The true empress has returned, unlock this door right now!”

One of the women snorted, and suddenly the two of them were laughing raucously. Emily was furious. “Delilah’s right, she is a little brat!” They jeered.

“Who is Delilah?” She asked, but she knew the answer. The one that these women revered so could only by the false empress. Emily felt free of her presence, more than she had in a long time, but something still tethered her to the void – she could only stray so far. 

“Delilah is our new empress, little sparrow, and tonight she walks in the void.”

“I thought you said we weren’t to talk to her!”

“It does no harm, and she isn’t to know is she now? Why not have a little fun?” Emily couldn’t stand it any longer. She was trapped. Again. How many times was she going to locked away and told to keep quiet. First it was a carriage, blindfolded with those Pendleton brutes, then the bathhouse, the boat, the lighthouse, and now here – in her own body. She screamed. Her mother would have scolded her for making such a sound, for fussing like a child. Her mother wasn’t here, and that was just another reason to scream. She threw her fists against the wood and cried into the dark, all the while the women cackled, fuelling her rage. The void was a distant memory, and now her hair was cut and her own voice felt alien. She couldn’t bare it. 

Then, there was another voice from behind the door; warm and commanding, untouched by the eerie edge of the void. It seemed familiar.

“You two, what are you playing at?” She snapped, and the other women went silent. 

“Captain,” one of them whimpered, “we were just messing about.”

“She such a spoilt little thing,” the other added, “we were putting her in her place.” 

“Well, she’ll wake up half the palace with the noise she’s making. Some of us still like to sleep, you’ll recall.” The Captain sighed. “clear off then, I’ll stand watch, it seems that you are unfit even for a task as simple as this. Delilah will hear of this. After all, how do you think she’ll feel when she wakes with a torn throat and bruised knuckles.” The two others murmured hasty, indignant affirmations as a screeching, tearing sound ripped through the air. The soft lulls of the void remained for a few moments after they’d vanished. Witches, she was sure of it now. 

“Empress?” The captain said. She sounded almost friendly, and more importantly, she had called her empress. 

“Who are you,” Emily croaked, suddenly feeling exhausted. 

“My name is Billie, we’ve met before but I doubt you’d remember.”

“You were there, weren’t you? You killed the guards, you watched him kill my mother. You took me away.” She would never forget any detail of that day, not even the voices under the old whaling masks that surrounded her as they dragged her away. 

“Huh, so you do remember then.”

“It’s not something I think I could forget.” Billie seemed taken aback, even through the door Emily could tell she was at a loss for words. Was it remorse, at the fact that she was more than just a spoilt brat without thoughts of her own? “Are you going to help me?”

“No,” there was no use lying to the kid. “This isn’t fair on you, I know, but life isn’t fair on most, and you especially have lived it pretty fair so far. This is for the greater good. Delilah’s going to change things here, everywhere.”

“I hope Corvo comes and chops all your heads off while you’re sleeping.” 

Billie gave a half-hearted chuckle. “Sometimes I wonder if he might, but he’s just a man, and now he’s a man in way over his head. He won’t last long.”

“Is Delilah coming back? Am I going to go back to… to that place?” She didn’t know quite how to describe it, it hadn’t felt like existing at all. She might have taken a moment to wonder why this woman who had helped ruined her life twice over was talking to her like a friend. She didn’t. She needed someone to listen to her. She couldn’t be alone again. 

“Yeah, kid, that’s the gist of it anyway. It’s the first time she’s leaving you… unsupervised. She says your spirit still gravitates towards its old vessel, when she’s gone you’ll come right back, basically.”

“She cut my hair,” Emily grumbled. Billie let out a light chuckle, Emily wasn’t so amused. “What is she doing in the void?”

“Who knows, she’s mysterious like that you know. No doubt she’s up to no good, messing with things she doesn’t understand.”

“So why are you helping her then?”

“Delilah knows what it’s like to be crushed under the weight of this city, to be churned out again as one of the pawns of your little empire. There’s a whole other world out there that the Abbey blinds us from, there’s power there, magic. It’s worth fighting for.” 

Silence hung between them for a moment. Emily wondered whether the new captain really believed that Delilah could makes things better for the people of the empire. The old grandfather clock downstairs ticked, marking out something she had missed – the passage of time. It really did sound like the old days – the days of her childhood spent running through the halls at night, awake until the blackest hours dreaming of the days to come, the life before her. Those things would never be hers. “Billie,” she ventured, “will you let me out. Just for a while?” 

Billie was almost tempted, but the girl was wily, she remembered as much from her kidnapping. She would kick and bite and scratch, and she could run wicked fast for such a small thing. She wasn’t about to let Delilah’s vessel go wandering, so she said simply, “goodnight, kid,” and continued down the hall. 


End file.
